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China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

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471–480 of 666 posts

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Of the two major US political parties today, one is primarily radical right with a small conservative branch that is struggling to stay in their party. The other is conservative to moderate with a small liberal branch that is fighting to make their party stand for something.

That liberals are the left wing in US is quite telling. In Europe and Latin America liberals are (center-)right.

The word "liberal" means different things in different places.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to glaze unelected uniparty governments, but this is what you can actually achieve if you don't have to focus on your new election the moment you enter office.

This. Also, China has always taken the long view, and has, historically, leveraged experience. I’m no expert in their culture, and am rather worried about their influence, but I can’t but admire their incredible strategic vision. Also, as a retiree, I’m rather saddened by some of the discussions, here.

Maybe this topic is too hot. I originally just wanted to mention it in passing, since these are all slogans ingrained in our minds. Everyone's discussion is about groups, not individuals. It's about government policies. Just like in China, our generation basically doesn't expect to have a pension, nor to retire before 70. Our elderly enjoy life in the parks, benefit from free public transport and cheap tickets to attractions, while we work day after day, until we die. Any normal person would be dissatisfied.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you to revisit what you know about the club of rome and what was actually published in the Limits to Growth paper. We have been disturbingly on track for a lot of the variables that were of interest back then in the “business as usual” model. People tend to dismiss anything and everything around resource constraint thinking by doing the quick Ehrlich quip, and never really dig deeper into where people lik…

What were those variables?

The scenarios were calculated based on hypothetical 'policies' of a society and the availability of natural resources. The scenario (from the 2004 book) we are tracking most closely is no.2, i.e 'business as usual' but with twice as much resources as was assumed in the 70s.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, aren't coral reefs also very sensitive to climate change? How much of that loss is because of regional activities and how much is due to global environmental changes?

Regional activties is a huge factor, much bigger than global imo. For example, South China Sea coastlines from Vietnam and China side are basically completely dead. There zero ocean environmental awareness in both countries and it's all about just devouring all ocean creatures with no self awareness. This is especially apparent if you take a look at the other side of the same sea. Philipines coasts are absolutely bea…

Yeah this is always my worry about the global warming debate. It's a crisis for sure but there are so many local initiatives that can be taken around ecosystem protection that are cheap and don't require national decision-making to be effective. They won't stop global warming but they will increase local resilience (and beauty).

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#475
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They go hand in hand. The authoritarianism of China allows it to undertake generational projects... Lack of free press makes it easy to look successful. It was the same thing with the Soviet union, was it ever really successful at any point?

You don't need press for everyone to see that China is straight killing it in almost every sector. Manufacturing, compute, you name it. Sure, they aren't without problems. And as for free press, look at where freedom of press took United States. You have companies like Fox news that "aren't actually news, just entertainment", who blatantly lie about election fraud. You have podcasters like Joe Rogan who are at the sa…

This is a wild comment.

It claims free speech is being taken away, then gets upset people use it (Fox News).

Then it celebrates a law that actually curtails free speech.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#476

India too has been adding more green cover than ever. Higher CO2 in atmosphere leads to faster growth of forests. But more important factor is urbanization for India. As people move to cities the need to cut down trees goes down.

India doesn't do it in an organized way though. You'll read about some 70 year old woman/man in an obscure village who's reforested thousands of acres on their own, or resuscitated a lake (e.g. the lake guy in Bengaluru). But there's little effort to harness their knowledge in a systematic way, add knowledge from others into the knowledge bank, do peer review, and then systematically dispense the knowledge in the for…

Do you personally know that or just from feelings?

Because I know of several organisations doing this and are organising projects state-wide (they focused in Bihar and surroundings).

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Also, China has always taken the long view, and has, historically, leveraged experience. I’m no expert in their culture, and am rather worried about their influence, but I can’t but admire their incredible strategic vision. Also, as a retiree, I’m rather saddened by some of the discussions, here.

Maybe this topic is too hot. I originally just wanted to mention it in passing, since these are all slogans ingrained in our minds. Everyone's discussion is about groups, not individuals. It's about government policies. Just like in China, our generation basically doesn't expect to have a pension, nor to retire before 70. Our elderly enjoy life in the parks, benefit from free public transport and cheap tickets to att…

Well, one of the issues, is that younger folks look at retired older folks, and think “unproductive leech,” while ignoring wrecked hands, shattered spines, and cancers. I also know many veterans, and they provided a Service that I definitely benefit from, today.

Also, speaking only for myself, I live off of investments and savings, created from 40 years of living frugally and sensibly. Every few months, I have to chase off people that try to steal those savings. It’s not surprising, but is annoying. There’s a huge industry, based completely around stealing money from older folks (usually ones without the means to defend themselves).

Back when I was young, there was this rather silly movie, called Logan’s Run. Besides a brief flash of Jenny Agutter naked, it offered a vision of a culture that literally kills off anyone over 30. The interesting thing, was that the culture still had strategic vision, but that vision was supplied by a machine.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#478
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That liberals are the left wing in US is quite telling. In Europe and Latin America liberals are (center-)right.

The word "liberal" means different things in different places.

Maybe, although many policies by European liberal center-right parties are to the left of US liberals.

The main reason is probably that US never had the major socialist movements of 20th century Europe. Before those liberals were the left in Europe too.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does your comment have to do with ecology? Just because China plants trees (news flash, so does the US) doesn't erase the fact they are far and away the biggest emitter of carbon emissions and have high levels of pollution. Glad they are trying to do good things though.

US is far higher per capita and doing nothing about it.

The US produces far more per capita to show for it.

Re: China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be coy, but what do you mean by that? The reason I ask is because I think many of us use these terms, but without ever thinking about exactly which behaviors we're critiquing, or how they relate to what we truly value. For instance both the Roman and Greek Empires deserve immense respect, yet they were both often imperial empires ruled by dictators. The same is no less true of many societies that played key ro…

this is the way - 'multi-polarity' is another word for 'diversity' which is another way to understand resiliency. We have seen in recent days what over dependence on single point of failure looks like (AWS outage), so from a species level perspective, it is better that we have many different forms of organisation and narrative. We just have to ensure that these narratives are not evangelical and intolerant!

I think hackernews might be the only place on the internet where a commenter uses an AWS outage as an example for why authoritarianism is a good thing.
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